


Saudade

by LRCee



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-16
Updated: 2013-08-20
Packaged: 2017-12-20 08:42:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/885268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LRCee/pseuds/LRCee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Saudade: something like nostalgia, like melancholy, like longing.<br/>Little snapshots of what may have been and what could have been.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ashara

**Author's Note:**

> Ashara Dayne looks down on the world after she has left it, and walks it as a ghost.
> 
> And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side  
> Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,  
> In her sepulchre there by the sea—  
> In her tomb by the sounding sea.
> 
> \-- excerpt from Annabel Lee, by Edgar Allan Poe

When word of Ashara Dayne’s death spreads like fire across the seven kingdoms, adding that illustrious name to a growing list of tragedies, Ashara herself is sinking. She feels the split, that ghostly severance of body and soul, and watches from her vaporous tower in the sky as her body drifts slowly through the water, a glowing whiteness descending deeper into the waves, into the dark, into the madness. Ashara wants to scream, to grasp her body back to herself, for what is she without it? Who, _who_ , is Ashara Dayne without her beauty? Her mind is writhing, and this ghostly world is shaking, cracking at the edges. _Come back_ , she wants to sob, to screech, _show me how to live!_

 

And then Ashara is laughing, so very angrily, great washes of hatred rushing over her, because isn’t that what she had been avoiding, _living_? She knows not whether this is heaven or hell, but she does not know if she can survive a world this gray, this eerie. This last cruelty is one too many—this is not the paradise that was promised.

 

_Mayhaps it is the paradise that was deserved._

Ashara soon finds the little slivers in her world, and looks down into the one of the living. The colors hurt her eyes, a brightness too painful for a ghost. The kingdom thinks of her, from time to time, but there is no one left to mourn. Elia, gone. Arthur, gone. Even Rhaegar and Lyanna, both dead before her. Another cruelty, perhaps, that Ashara was the last to go, the only one to see it till the very end.

 

When the people of Westeros think of Ashara Dayne, it is superficial. Some think of the amethysts glowing in her eyes, the soft flare of her hips, and Ashara declares these the _lustful_. Others sigh over her jump from a tower so high, into a sea so welcoming, and Ashara questions whether these are the romantics or the macabre, and with a sickening laugh thinks how often these two traits are intertwined, like desperate lovers.

 

 _There is nothing romantic about this_ , Ashara thinks, as she looks down through her little sliver in the ghostly wall at the girls thinking how _very like a song it is._

 

But the songs never speak of grey worlds, misty worlds, worlds where even the dead can go mad.

 

Ashara watches Robert Baratheon come for his throne, watches him marry the Lannister girl and hates them and the cheering crowd alike. _How dare you congratulate him!_ Ashara thinks as the word _dragonspawn_ twists in her head. At least, she thinks with a perverse, bitter glory, at least he did not have his ending. For Lyanna Stark is gone too, and Ashara knows she must be trapped in a world much like her own, or somewhere far worse, clinging to the ghost of Rhaegar Targaryen.

 

 _The romantic and the macabre_ Ashara remembers, and thinks of little Lyanna Stark and melancholic Rhaegar Targaryen wrapped around each other in an embrace that ruined them all. She suddenly feels some sort of pity for the Stark girl. _Too young_. And Ashara is relieved she can still feel compassion in this place, and at least dead Lyanna Stark has given her that.  At least she has given her pity.

 

Finally, when Ashara feels brave, she sticks her hand through the little sliver between worlds, and claws her way through. She is no longer trapped in that ghostly abyss, and maybe that is something to be rejoiced, but here she is only a figure ghosting through the living, and she feels even less alive than before. Ashara floats to the Palestone Sword, and looks on it with hatred.

 

 _You took my life from me_ , she thinks, because when you have to live with yourself for eternity, denial seems your greatest friend.

 

She steps into the sea, and the water doesn’t even ripple; she makes no impact. Instead, she swims, swims with a grace she never possessed in life, swims to the ocean floor, and scours it for her body, for herself. She cannot find it, and this makes Ashara’s head ring. _Give it back, give me to myself._

 

When at last she finds her remains, she wishes she hadn’t. _This is not me._ _Gods above, let this not be me._ All that remains of Ashara Dayne, all that remains of a _life_ , is a ghostly body, unmoving, unseeing. Her eyes are open, the purple still faintly there, and Ashara reaches out to close her eyes, and the gods give her this small mercy at least. Ashara can touch nothing else in the world of the living, but at least she can give this body of hers peace.

 

Over time, what feels like years, but Ashara knows is only weeks in this land of the living, she travels. It is in death that she finally sees the world. She goes North, to Winterfell, and sees Ned Stark and his young son, who looks like him not at all. She drifts through the corridors of this castle of cold, and stumbles upon another boy in a nursery, dark of hair and gray of eye. He has grown since she saw him last, a babe at Starfall. New life among all that death. She reaches out to smooth that dark Stark hair, but she cannot touch him. She does not live in his world. She is leaving the room when she notices dried petals on a dresser, so old they look like they would fall apart if even breathed on. Underneath the blackened corners brought about with age, she can see the blue underneath. But these flowers will not survive much longer. They too will turn to dust, like all they brought. They will not survive much longer. After all, that tourney was two years ago.

 

Ashara leaves the North, avoids King’s Landing and heads back to Dorne, to home. She floats through the Marches, and wants to cry for lack of heat. Just like the cold did not touch her in the North, the heat will not sear her here. Hot and cold have no power over the dead.

 

She passes the Tower of Joy, and goes inside, though she knows only too well she should not. She is opening too many closed doors; she is airing out too many dusty rooms.

 

Nothing has changed here, and the realization is horrible. The bed is unmade still, and brown with dried blood. Books are open on the table, and her fingers ghost over pages Rhaegar touched months ago. And then the sand, stretching to a blue horizon. The sand, red with her brother's blood.

 

She leaves.

 

There is a draw to Sunspear, to Oberyn, to his daughters, to Doran. But Sunspear has its own ghosts now, it does not need another.

 

Instead, she goes back to Starfall, where she would always end up. Ashara may be a ghost, but of the two, Starfall seems more dead. Only silence greets her here. This is a place of sadness, dipped too many times in grief. What are you meant to do, when you are the cause? Ashara gazes on Allyria for long hours. Allyria, who no longer sings, or smiles, or laughs.

 

_Are you a ghost too, little sister?_

Ashara presses a kiss against her head, knowing Allyria cannot feel it. And then Ashara Dayne floats again toward the sky, because even that grey mass is better than looking at a world she helped make wrong.

 

When Ashara creeps back through her little sliver separating the two worlds, it is not gray that greets her, however, but sunshine. She feels six years old again, and at the Water Gardens, splashing in a pool of gold. _This must be heaven_ , she thinks, as she looks at the glistening waters, emerald trees, blazing orange sun.

 

And then her heart is in her throat, and she is crying, truly crying for the first time in such a long time, for it is Arthur in front of her, and Elia, both holding out hands. She takes them, and is warm again. She takes them, and can _feel_.

 

_This is heaven._

Ashara spends her life here, surrounding by those she loved, and loves, best. Arthur, finally relaxed, Elia, finally content, restful. Rhaenys and Aegon play in the water pools, and they grow up. Arthur, Elia and Ashara stay frozen, forever young.

 

From time to time, Ashara goes back to her little sliver, and walks amongst those she used to know. The dark haired boy grows up, and goes to the wall, following his uncle—how very different now, dressed in blacks without wine dripping from his hair!— up icy Northern roads.

 

Slowly, Allyria smiles again, and then hums softly, and finally laughs. The day Allyria laughs is the day Ashara truly finds peace.

 

_Thank you, little sister. Thank you for this forgiveness._

When Ned Stark climbs through the little sliver in the sky, Ashara smiles, and holds out a hand. 


	2. Lyanna--Modern AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person died for no reason.”  
> \--Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

Outside her window, the glass sheathed in frost, snow is swirling. The world is a gray mass, just past dawn. Already, the room is too hot. A steamy little radiator is pumping out waves of heat into the small room, making it scorching and sticky. Lyanna throws her head back, dark hair streaming down her back, and feels droplets of sweat trickle down her breastbone. Her hands are gripping Robert’s shoulders, scraping lightly down his chest, curling in his hair, and Lyanna pictures herself as a warrior queen, mighty and out of control. She’s rolling her hips over his, back and forth and around, and biting her lip until Robert leans up and kisses her, biting her lip himself. Just for an instant, she looks into those blue ocean eyes and pictures them just a little darker, with just a touch more violet. Indigo instead of cerulean. She blinks away the thought, and lets Robert flip her over.

 

The first time she saw Rhaegar was in early autumn, a year before, at a dingy bar Ashara liked because the bartenders were so fond of giving her free drinks. The night had been brisk, and the moon had been a perfect orange circle, glowing through dark clouds. Lyanna was late, as usual, but had stopped her hasty walking to stand on a corner by a silent park. Staring up at that autumn moon, the wind whipping her hair around her face, she had felt like she had reached a point in time where she was exactly where she was meant to be. Like even though the world was huge, she had finally stumbled onto her path. Like she and her true life had intersected. It wasn’t a feeling she got often, but it made her happy.

 

She started walking again, crossing in the middle of an empty street. Night was Lyanna’s favorite time. In this quiet neighborhood, it felt like she was the only one about, and it reminded her, absurdly, of the godswood at Winterfell, so quiet, but cold. Oldtown was a long way from Winterfell, but she loved it all the same. Even from her spot on the other side of the city, she could see the burning light on the top of the Hightower, never obscured, even in the winding little alleys that made up the city. She passed the river she had ice skated on with Elia and Ashara when it froze over one winter night a year before, the three of them freezing and red-faced, wondering if what they were doing was illegal. In the distance, she saw the looming cathedral her father had dragged her family to when they visited, the Starry Sept. Rickard had enjoyed the history, Benjen had enjoyed the gift shop and Brandon had loudly mocked anything religious while Ned tried to hush him, embarrassed. Lyanna had laughed into the silence then, thinking of her phone call with Ned the night before, where he tried to sneak in Catelyn Tully’s name at any possible point in the conversation, desperately trying to remain natural.

 

In the distance, the Hightower’s clock boomed out. Eleven. Even that ringing sound, so infuriating during exams and late nights, even that she loved. It was ringing out the beginning of her adventure. This autumnal city, old and proud and full of ghosts, this was the start of her life.

 

She was rounding the corner then, her scuffed boots making little clicking sounds on the cobblestones, when she saw two men ahead of her, presumably making for the bar as well, a squat little building across the street. Both were fair, and of a height with each other. The more muscled one seemed familiar, and it wasn’t until a streetlight threw an orange shaft of light on his face that Lyanna recognized Arthur, Ashara’s older brother.  Arthur Dayne was strong and good-looking, adept at any sport he tried. _That family is too perfect._ The leaner one, long pale hair bound in a ponytail, he was unfamiliar.

 

Lyanna straggled behind the pair, looking to the ground more often than not. Arthur was kind, but he intimidated her sometimes, even if Lyanna would only ever admit that to herself. She supposed it was a family trait. Ashara Dayne had appeared the most intimidating person in all Westeros before Lyanna had gotten to know her.

 

Across the street, the ponytailed blond opened the door to the bar and the two were ushered into the smoky pit, a burst of laughter and music enveloping them, until the door closed and the street was silent again.

 

Lyanna had opened the door of the bar, hit in the face with loud voices and beer-stained breath, and squeezed past a brawny brown haired man pounding a pint on the counter. She could see Arthur near the back, and Ashara’s dark hair bouncing behind him, and she shouldered her way through the small crowd badgering the bartender.

 

“Here she is! And only fifteen minutes late! We were wondering whether you had decided to go back North.” Ashara’s lilting Dornish drawl, infused with warmth, was so different from Lyanna’s own piercing Northern tones. Lyanna sometimes felt like she stuck out among Elia, Ashara and Arthur, all from the same place, and Lyanna so draped in Northern sentiment—ice, white bark, red leaves.

 

“This is for you,” Elia pushed a Guinness toward her, “and this is Rhaegar.” Elia had pointed to the blonde ponytailed man from the street, and he had smiled and nodded. Rhaegar was almost unnaturally good-looking—eyes dark and almost violet, hair almost silver in the dim light.

 

“Hi,” Lyanna had breathed, and damned herself for not sounding strong. Lyanna wasn’t shy, and Lyanna didn’t often feel unnerved by anyone.

 

“There’s Jon.” Arthur nudged Rhaegar and gestured to the red-haired man sitting at a table on the other side of the room.

 

“Nice meeting you, Lyanna.” Rhaegar had said, and for a second it seemed like he frowned, before he walked off. Ashara snorted, mumbled something about certain people having perpetual rainclouds over their heads, and Arthur tsked at her, before he followed his friend.

 

“What greatness you gave up, Martell. Fuck, we should dress you all in black, buy you some cigarettes and French poetry and he’d probably follow you to Volantis.”

 

“What?” Lyanna had smiled in question, while Elia smiled into her drink, shaking her head.

 

“Oh, the mistaken mishaps of high school. It was a weird set-up, our mothers are friends. It felt like an arranged marriage, and lasted for five weeks.”

 

“ _Not_ the best time for me to have met you!” Ashara added.

 

“Shush, Ash. Honestly, Lya, I like him, he’s still a friend, and he’s grown up a lot.”

 

“I should hope soooooo” Ashara trilled, Elia laughing next to her, swirling her drink.

 

“I can’t tell if I wish you had met him then or whether it’s better you met him now. Seriously though, he’s,” Elia had paused, thinking. “He’s interesting, and intense. But in sophomore year he was just, I don’t know, kind of bullshitty?”

 

“This was Rhaegar in sophomore year,” Ashara had interrupted, before lowering her voice, and slouching. “No beer, Ashara, thanks. I drink absinthe. It was a banned drink for a while, you know.’” I shit you not!” Ashara punctuated each word by tapping her glass on the table, “ _That_ was how up his own ass sixteen year old Rhaegar Targaryen was.”

 

“Credit where credit is due, Dayne. Even he laughs about that now.”

 

“I think that’s the only acceptable response.”

 

Lyanna had looked over to where Arthur, Rhaegar and sour Jon Connington sat, looking at Rhaegar’s profile, so aquiline in its structure. He had turned then, and looked at her, and Lyanna had snapped her head back, hoping he hadn’t seen.

 

The memory fades, and Lyanna is back in her sauna of a room at Winterfell, Robert Baratheon kissing around her breasts. Robert kisses up her throat, little bites that will leave red marks. She’ll have to cover them up, or Ned will have a conniption, albeit a quiet one. Robert is moving a hand up her stomach, palming her breasts, shoving her necklace aside. Lyanna turns her head to look at the little sword pendant, now askew.

She fights her own battles.

 

On her bedside table, her phone buzzes. She knows who it’s from.

 

_I’m going to be up North next month._

_Can I see you?_

After their first meeting in the bar, Lyanna had seen Rhaegar Targaryen every so often around the Citadel, sitting on the campus green, in the coffee shop, sometimes in the library. She gave him little smiles, and nothing more.

 

She had been in a class with him the next semester, a history of the northern and southern kingdoms, before they had united all those years ago. She had gotten into a debate (argument) with some snotty boy in the class and even though she knew they were wasting class time, the boy was wrong, and Lyanna was stubborn. Ten minutes of back and forth and Lyanna knew she had won. If debate was a battle, Lyanna had the tireless soldier of her mind, and it had been put to good use. The boy had finally consented, agreeing that _yes_ , the patriarchy formed during the Age of Heroes was one that laid a foundation for the patriarchy of today, and _no_ , that did not serve _anyone_ well. The boy, some blonde from the westerlands, had slumped in his seat and Lyanna had tried to resist smirking. She had caught Rhaegar’s eye, and she thought he looked impressed.

 

That was when they had started talking, getting coffee after class, saving library tables for each other during exam periods. The two would huddle over books and computers, Lyanna’s hair even wilder than usual, pencils holding it in a bun, Rhaegar’s books on Early Myths and Prophecies for that weird history class spread around them, and Lyanna could sometimes hear the soft strains of the harp music Rhaegar listened to when he needed to study. She would smile to herself, because he was the only person she knew under fifty who listened to harp music with any regularity.

 

Then the summer had come, and things changed. Lyanna went back to Winterfell, Elia, Ashara and Arthur down to Dorne, and Rhaegar to King’s Landing. Lyanna and Rhaegar had been on the train together, on their way north from Oldtown, and when Rhaegar got off at King’s Landing, they had agreed to talk over the summer.

 

Lyanna hadn’t heard from him much, even when she went down to Sunspear to see Arthur and Ashara and Elia. Lyanna had wondered if Rhaegar would come, had tried calling him, but he hadn’t answered, and he didn’t show.

 

“I feel bad for him,” Elia had said softly as she and Lyanna had sat on the sandy dunes outside Elia’s house. “His dad’s kind of crazy, and his mom’s having another kid. I don’t know how he feels about that. I mean, being twenty-one and about to have a baby sister? I feel like he’s going to end up being more of a parent to her than Aerys will be.”

 

Lyanna hadn’t known what to say, had played with the sand, little golden beads streaming through her fingers.

 

Elia sighed. “He’ll do it, anyway. Rhaegar always needs to be the savior.”

 

The last time she had seen him had been in King’s Landing, at another bar beer-slugging Robert Baratheon had dragged her and Ned to when they visited him. Lyanna hadn’t seen Robert in a few years, and he had grown tall and muscled and a bit too friendly. She liked him, saw a little of herself in him, sometimes, both a bit too wild and a bit too careless. He had slung an arm around her waist, resting lazily on her hip—Ned, she noticed, looked pointedly at the offending hand—and guided her into the bar. She had gone to sit in the back, eyeing the pool table and wondering who she could get to play her, when she saw that pale blonde hair, those purplish eyes.

 

“Rhaegar!” She had shouted, going to him.

 

“Lyanna!” He was surprised, but hearing him say her name made her feel a bit fluttery.

 

She opened her mouth to tell him she was staying in King’s Landing for another day, that they should hang out, when he kissed her, surprising her so much she gasped into his mouth.

 

She had a hand on his shoulder—how had that gotten there?—and had started to wind it around his neck, when Robert had seen them, Robert who thought for no reason at all that she was his, and had pushed Rhaegar away from her.

 

Voices had been raised, Robert was red-faced, Rhaegar calm, and Ned had pulled her out of the bar.

 

She hasn’t seen Rhaegar in six months, and wonders what exactly Robert had said to him. More, she wonders how she had ended up _here_ , with Robert Baratheon’s hand between her legs. Her phone buzzes again. She feels ashamed.

 

Robert collapses next to her, breathing heavily, and she turns on her side to look at him. Robert can be exhausting at times, but she likes him, likes his effusive manner, his dirty jokes, his loud laughter. But Robert would always be a friend, would always be someone to fall into bed with, not into love with. She knows Robert thinks he loves her, and the thought makes her angry.

 

_You don’t even know me. Don’t you presume._

 

The sky outside grows lighter, whiter, and Robert falls asleep. Lyanna gets up and goes to her mirror, dabbing concealer on her neck, and looking at her reflection. Dark hair, gray eyes, red lips. But the eyes look a little weary, the lips a bit downturned. And underneath everything, under the lust, the tiredness, the heat, Lyanna can feel it stirring again. That feeling she’d known her entire life, that feeling she had hoped she’d forgotten. That _restlessness_ , grasping at her throat, shaking her.

 

_Time to go, Lyanna._

 

She feels the restlessness surge through her, pricking at her fingertips, worming down between her toes. The same feeling she’d get when she was younger, racing through the forest near Winterfell, scurrying up the great white tree with the red leaves and the carved face.

 

Lyanna feels like she has been _going_ her entire life, searching for something, but she doesn’t know what. Sometimes, she feels like someone has tied strings to her limbs and is playing with her, making her jump. She feels out of control.

 

_Run away, little girl._

 

Her phone buzzes.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one kind of ran away from me, but I guess Lyanna's like that.  
> Any feedback is greatly appreciated!


	3. Lyanna

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My love,  
> We have found each other  
> Thirsty and we have  
> Drunk up all the water and the  
> Blood,  
> We found each other  
> Hungry  
> And we bit each other  
> As fire bites,  
> Leaving wounds in us. 
> 
> But wait for me,  
> Keep for me your sweetness.  
> I will give you too  
> A rose.   
> \--excerpt from Absence, by Pablo Neruda
> 
> “In this part of the story I am the one who  
> dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,  
> because I love you, Love, in fire and in blood.”  
> \--Pablo Neruda

Years later, when this is just a painful memory, when Rhaegar Targaryen is mourned as the lost dragon prince and Lyanna Stark is a stone statue under Northern ground, people will speculate on how deeply their love ran. Lovers will clutch at each other under full moons, imagining themselves Rhaegar and Lyanna come again—bound by a love great enough to start a war, to shake the very foundation of the world. They will swear Rhaegar died with Lyanna’s name whispered against the riverbank, will vow Lyanna knew when Rhaegar drew his last breath, that she sensed her other half being ripped from her in fury and fire.

In truth, Rhaegar’s last thoughts were of the blood choking him, gushing out of his mouth, and of dark Dornish eyes. He died with blood staining his teeth and guilt staining his soul.

In truth, Lyanna had a hand pressed to her stomach, sure she felt a nudge, and smiled widely at Ser Arthur, who had let her help polish Dawn. She could almost mistake it for happiness.

 

The night before Rhaegar left to fight Robert Baratheon—“to battle for our future, to seal our promise”—was dark and warm, little stars twinkling in the night, soft breezes wafting scents of orange and jasmine toward the tower windows.

Rhaegar was sitting at a table in their room, staring out the window, unseeing. Lyanna came up behind him, slid her hands down his chest, opened his collar to feel his bare skin.

“One last time,” she breathed, and he turned his head to meet hers, pressing his lips against hers, his forehead against hers. And then Rhaegar got up suddenly, knocking the chair over, and picked her up, and she was laughing, and it was almost like the beginning. The beginning, when everything felt like a dream. When she had first walked into the tower, Rhaegar’s hand on her back. “Our tower of joy!” he had declared, spinning her in a circle. She had laughed and kissed him, until Ser Arthur walked in behind them, and she had stopped, embarrassed.

But that was months ago, before she had found out she was with child, before Brandon and her father had died, before her rose-colored dream turned into a nightmare. And now she was pregnant, and now Rhaegar was leaving.

He laid her down on the bed, hovering over her, kissing down her throat, untying the laces on her bodice. He shoved the cloth aside, tugged the skirt down her legs, until she was bare before him, and he looked at her like this was the first time, instead of the last.

Lyanna felt warm under his eyes, still excited that it was _her_ with him, still surprised. He pressed himself against her then, kissing almost desperately down her body, stopping to kiss at her breasts, sucking dark plumes against her pale skin. He suckled on her nipples, and she moaned, arching into him, pressing her breasts to his face. _More_. With Rhaegar, it was always more. He massaged her chest, flicking his nails over her nipples, kissing down her stomach, biting lightly at her hipbones, before spreading her legs. He looked her in the eyes then, and she wanted to cry, didn’t want him to leave, wanted him to look her in the eyes forever. Wanted him to never let her go. He moved down the bed then, kissing up her inner thighs, looking up at her, and then he was kissing her slit, massaging her with his thumb, throwing her legs over his shoulders, kissing, kissing, kissing, never letting go.

She gasped, scraping her heels against his back, clutching at the bedclothes, writhing. And then he was in her, flipping her over, and she was grinding against him, laying down as flat as she could against him, kissing him, never letting go.

They fell asleep tangled in each other, trying to find a way to stay together forever.

Rhaegar had left at dawn, pressing a kiss into her hair, and a deeper one on her mouth.

“We will marry when I return,” he breathed into her hair, before mounting his horse and riding off, swallowed into the mountains.

Arthur had put a tentative hand on her back, and led her inside.

The days passed slowly, Lyanna always nervous, frightened word would come of battle, of a hopeless cause, of a dragon prince lying dead in the dirt. But no word came, and weeks passed, the days growing listless.

Lyanna found out Rhaegar had died a month after the battle happened. Oswell Whent delivered the word, and Lyanna did not ask him how he found out, but went upstairs, silent, into their room, Rhaegar’s and her’s, and sat down on the bed. Her hands were shaking, violent tremors that made her feel like her body wasn’t hers anymore. And then she was gasping, great shuddering breaths because she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t grasp in air, and she thought she could feel her baby kicking but she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe. Lyanna hit her hand against her chest, trying to slap her lungs into working, and her hand was shaking again, and then she was crying, great waves of confused tears gushing down her cheeks, dribbling down onto her skirts. Again, she was lost. She had gone this far, run this far, only to be lost again. It wasn’t fair. But life wasn’t fair, and Lyanna thought of Elia, who she hadn’t thought of in weeks, and her children, and how she wasn’t the only one with loss.

Lyanna laid down in bed, numb, and thought about all those slow weeks—wandering around the Tower, polishing Arthur’s sword—and thought about how Rhaegar was dead for all of them. He was dead, and she hadn’t even known.

Word of the Sack reached them two weeks later. It was night, and the brothers of the Kingsguard thought Lyanna asleep. The door to the Tower slammed, and Lyanna got out of bed—she couldn’t look at it now without thinking of Rhaegar—and crouched near the door of her room, watching as Gerold Hightower entered, sweating, and listened as words floated up the stairs.

“Aerys is dead” Gerold Hightower had rasped, breathless. “Slain by Jaime.”

“What?” Arthur shook his head, disbelieving. “Jaime’s seven-and-ten…I knighted him myself.”

There was quiet, Lyanna breathing raggedly, feeling kicks against her stomach.

“What of Elia?” Arthur barked. “What of the children?”

Ser Gerold shook his head. “Slain by the Lannisters. They say the boy was…unrecognizable. That Princess Rhaenys was stabbed near fifty times. Gregor Clegane got to Princess Elia. She was…”

Arthur slammed his hand on the table, stopping him.

“Robert Baratheon has the throne.”

“And what did he say of this brutality? Ser Oswell had asked.

“It was said he called them dragonspawn.” The word echoed around the little room, ringing off the walls, staining the stone with blood.

Lyanna waited for the Kingsguard to retreat to their rooms. Watched from shadows as Gerold climbed the stairs, as Oswell followed him. Arthur remained in the little room on the first floor, staring at the wooden table, unblinking. Lyanna watched Arthur, neither of them moving, Arthur staring emptily, Lyanna hiding in her shadowy corner. She remembered how Arthur was the only one who would say Elia’s name around Rhaegar, how he had smiled when Lyanna had asked him once of his upbringing in Dorne when she had finally mustered up her courage to talk to this famous knight, this man she was in awe of.

“I spent much time at the Water Gardens, my lady,” Arthur had said. “Near Sunspear, where children from all over Dorne are welcomed.”

Lyanna had tried to imagine these Water Gardens, with their pools of water and orange trees, but all she knew of gardens was the godswood at Winterfell, and that hardly counted.

“I actually knew the Princess Elia when we were children.” Arthur had smiled, and Lyanna had recognized that expression, but she couldn’t tell from where.

“She is a true princess, my lady,” he had said, looking at her almost sadly.

As Lyanna looked at Arthur now, this frozen statue, she realized the expression Arthur had whenever he spoke of Elia. It was the one Rhaegar had whenever he looked at her, as if she had knit the world together, as if she had lit the sun. Lyanna looked at Arthur, and thought again how she wasn’t the only one with loss.

After what could have been hours, Arthur moved from the table, climbed the stairs toward the top of the tower and was submerged into shadow. The path to the door was clear.

Lyanna ran.

When she finally reached Wyl in the Boneway, a castle bordering the Sea of Dorne, she did not know how long she had been gone from the Tower. It felt like months, years, though Lyanna knew it could only have been a few weeks. They had blurred together, impossible days of saddle sores and bloodshot eyes, of the constant fear of delivering too early, of getting lost. But she could not stop, because Lyanna knew the Tower could not keep her safe forever, knew one day she would be found, and knew above all she would not let her child come to harm.

_Dragonspawn dragonspawn dragonspawn_

The seat of Wyl had a small town attached to it, and Lyanna stayed in an inn before securing her passage to Essos, done with a silver coin and a pleading look—the captain could hardly say no to a woman as pregnant as she. She knew to be careful at Wyl, a House sworn to House Martell-- she would find no friends among Dornish lords. She got bleach and dye from a kind woman at a pillow house, and that night, her last in Westeros, she poured the solution over her head, turning her dark hair pale blonde. Lyanna washed the liquid from her hair and stared at herself in the cracked mirror in her room. She almost looked like a Targaryen. It was the closest she would ever come to being one.

The day Lyanna boarded her ship for Tyrosh was the day Ned stormed the Tower of Joy, demanding his sister, only to find her gone.

* * *

Lyanna arrives in Tyrosh two weeks later, and that night gives birth to the last Targaryen prince in a gush of blood and pain in an inn by the harbor, sandwiched between a brothel and a pot shop.

Her boy, her Jon, is so thoroughly a Stark that she feels her heart is swelling out of her chest with joy. His hair is dark like hers once was, and when his eyes finally settle on gray, she proclaims him a true child of the North. She thinks of Rhaegar when she looks at Jon, wondering what he would have thought.

“He is you, my love” Rhaegar would have said, but she knows part of him would have been disappointed the third head of the dragon did not look more like himself.

The years pass, and Jon grows up. They travel, from Tyrosh to Myr to Norvos. From the dancing bears of Volantis to the watery streets of Braavos. Lyanna takes odd jobs to conserve the money she has saved still from the Tower, a place that seems worlds away. And it is, Lyanna thinks, as she looks out on the crooked roofs and watery lanes of Braavos.

Lyanna helps care for horses when she can, finds a miracle job working with saddles, ignoring the lusty looks of the young men around her and the thoroughly doubtful ones of the old. She entertains ideas of joining a sellsword company, picturing herself as Visenya Targaryen, but she knows she cannot fight. She has Jon, and her father never let her use that sword Brandon had given her when she was little. Thinking of her father and Brandon always feels like someone has dug a knife through her heart. It’s been seven years, and still she cannot imagine them gone. In Lyanna’s mind, Rickard and Brandon Stark sit still in Winterfell, suspended in time.

The thinks of Ned often, but especially when Jon grows solemn or looks at her as though he is humoring her, however kindly. She wants Ned next to her, Benjen next to her _so_ _badly_ but cannot return to a world where the man who sits the Iron Throne would slay her child in an instant.

* * *

They are in Pentos, and Jon is twelve. The two are walking the streets near the harbor, sucking on little candles, Jon’s hand sticky in hers. A little group emerges in front of them, stepping into a huge palanquin. A man is disappearing into the covered carriage, blue headed and dressed in the motley array of a tired sellsword. A young boy is with him, and for an instant Lyanna freezes, thinking he could be Rhaegar’s son, if Rhaegar had had blue hair. But Rhaegar’s son is next to her, licking his fingers clean of sugar. The man and son are distracting, but it is the septa that confuses Lyanna, and identifies the group as Westerosi.

 _Careful, Lya_ , Lyanna thinks, for though it has been twelve years, she never knows who will remember. The septa looks in her direction, but at Jon, not her, and just like Lyanna stopped at the sight of this blue-haired boy, the septa stares at Jon, as if she has seen a ghost. The woman is so familiar, but Lyanna cannot place her, though the eyes are telling. She knows her, but from where? It is only when the woman steps into the palanquin, ushering the boy in front of her up the steps and they are carried off that Lyanna places her, the purple-eyed beauty Brandon smiled at and Ned had been in awe of.

 _Ashara Dayne_. She almost whips around to face the palanquin, but stops herself. Ashara Dayne will offer her no help. Dorne’s greatest beauty is no friend to her. Besides, Jon is tugging at her hand, and they have already been here too long.

They travel, and travel, circling the Free Cities, once even boarding a ship to the beautiful Summer Islands. Lyanna teases Jon with stories of Asshai, saying they will one day go and Jon can become a sorcerer. Jon has inherited Lyanna’s restlessness, her need to move, and she feels at once incredibly proud and somewhat worried. She does not know if she wants her son to grow up like her.

They return to Braavos when Jon is four-and-ten, back to that city of memories. Lyanna looks for a colorful palanquin, wondering if it would have found its way here. She looks, but cannot tell herself why. Why would they be in Braavos, so far from Pentos? Ashara Dayne has nothing to give her, except perhaps news of home. Lyanna looks, but never finds it.

She is walking through the streets one day, Jon staying behind at the small one room house above a pub they have rented, jabbing at the air with a knife fashioned as a sword. Lyanna walks through little alleys, passing orange trees and caressed by wafts of jasmine flowers floating from bushes. She passes a house with a red door, and is walking on when the door bursts open, and a blonde haired man exits, a little dragon embroidered on his chest. Lyanna gasps, drawing his attention, and his purple eyes pierce hers. But Rhaegar never frowned at her like this man does and Lyanna sits down on the curb of the street, closing her eyes, hoping to open them to a world where Rhaegar Targaryen still exists beyond muffled words in castle solars, where Brandon shows her how to fight in the godswood, where her father wraps her in strong hugs. But it is a world that cannot be, and Lyanna walks back toward her rented room, back to Jon, all she has left.

Lyanna walks past the port, past men and women screeching their wares, past customers and sellers haggling. She passes little mummer’s shows, and is walking toward a quieter part of the road when someone grabs her elbow. Lyanna whips around, breathing hard, and laughs in relief when she realizes it is Layla, one of the women who works at the brothel near the busiest part of the port, whom Lyanna has known since her first visit to Braavos nine years past.

“Have you heard?” Layla’s accent hints at the Reach, and though she has never known Lyanna’s real name, has never known Lyanna’s true story, thinks Jon is some sellsword’s son, her eyes are always a bit too knowing, a bit too wise. “Robert Baratheon has died. I don’t know how, but every ship from Westeros bears the same news: the king is dead.”

Lyanna stares at her, trying to stop herself from gaping.

“I can’t stay, but I thought you should know. I have to go, well, home, I suppose. You too, yes?” Layla starts walking off in the direction of the brothel, but turns to smile at her. “Goodbye.”

Lyanna still pictures Robert as he was before everything started, strong, quick to laughter but quick too to anger, and even quicker to drunkenness. With Robert dead, it feels like her youth is completely shattered. Who amongst those she knew still lives? Is Ned alive? Benjen? Her guilt is overpowering, that thing that constantly eats away at her, that hatred that she never went back to them, that she never let them know she survived. Who was left that she knew? It was a whole new cast of characters in Westeros now. A more peaceful cast, she hoped.

That night, with Jon asleep on the bed, Lyanna leans on the windowsill, listening to the laughter in the streets, the mocking calls of the bravos, the laps of the waves. A few strands of song reach her window, sad plucks of a harp, some song of death and dying, love and loss. Staring out the window, Lyanna travels through the years, thinking of that grand tourney at Harranhal, of the dragon prince she did not yet know singing a similar song, of a young girl trying to hide her tears and pouring a cup of wine over her brother’s head when she could not. Perhaps, Lyanna thinks, this is the first time life has been like a song.

Lyanna turns to face the room, leaning against the stone wall. She stares at Jon, her Northern son. She crosses to the little washbasin in the corner of the room, and removes the dark dye from a cupboard, before patting it onto her head.

It is time to go home.


	4. Rhaegar--Modern AU I.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Tell me a ghost story."  
> "Okay--you and me."  
> \--Jonathan Carroll
> 
> "I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too."  
> \--Pablo Neruda
> 
> "You loved a man who treated you like absinthe, half poison and half god."  
> \--Anais Nin

He’s forgotten how to breathe.

 

It's the letter that does it, a thick white piece of paper that he races up to the attic to read, near the box he still keeps, that holds all his memories of her.

 

He reads it on the floor, next to the opened box, next to the flowers, scattered blue petals trapped between the pages of an old book. Wrinkled and withered, ugly things now, but they had been beautiful once, when Lyanna had first pressed them into the pages of the book, laughing, saying they would have them forever.

 

He supposed she was right. Ten years had passed, and here they still were.

 

He had surprised himself back then, with how happy he had been. How quick he was to laughter whenever Lyanna was with him! How easily he melted into her hugs, how gratefully he slurped up whatever burnt and blackened food she set in front of him. He had never tired of her voice, those lilting tones, that almost harsh Northern accent, nor of her laugh, that tinkling sound, like gold rattling.

 

He could still feel her arms, phantom limbs wrapped around him, hugging him from behind as he made coffee in the morning, three black cups for her, one little shot of espresso for him. Could still feel her lips, warm and soft against his neck, whispering into his ear, trailing down his body.

 

But mostly, when he thought of Lyanna, saw her in his mind’s eye, emblazoned on his brain, he saw her as she had been that last day, wandering around the apartment, tucking blue roses behind her ear.

 

“I’m going out, to get the flowers,” she had said, and he had wanted to argue.

 

“You’re effectively wearing a flower crown, Lya, I hardly think we need more!” But when he had turned to tell her, she was already out the door.

 

He stares at Lyanna now, and is almost shocked at how young she looks. Dark hair wild as always, arms wrapped around the trunk of the tree next to her. If he looks closely enough, he can see the glint of the piercing on her cartilage, the one she had done herself when she was fifteen.

 

“I ran the needle through a flame!” Lyanna had laughed indignantly when she told him the story, swirling her beer, scooping out the foam with her spoon. “It was a very hygienic affair!” She had smiled then, and her eyes were so warm, little gray pools.

 

“My older brother, Ned, had walked into the bathroom when I had the needle stuck halfway through my ear, and I think he thought I was in the middle of some like, satanic ceremony.” She had snorted, and even that had been endearing. “He should have knocked, anyway.”

 

He stares at Lyanna, at this girl he tries so desperately not to think about, this girl he tries so desperately to keep out of his mind, knowing she would eat him alive if he didn’t. He stares at Lyanna, and then looks away, letting the photo flicker to the floor. She looks so young. But that photo had been taken twelve years ago, in a time when even solemn Rhaegar Targaryen didn’t feel so sad.

 

The attic is dusty, and this is a box he shouldn’t have opened. He picks one of the petals up, and feels it turn to ash in his helpless hands. It was an old book these flowers had been trapped in, some fantasy about dragons that his father had given him before he died, when it was difficult to understand him, difficult to discern meaning in his obsessive mumbles, difficult to watch his twitching hands, difficult to understand why his eyes would light up whenever someone lit a match. He should give the book to Viserys, who would treat it with more care than he has.

 

Lyanna had been in the hospital many times with him when his father was sick, making frequent trips to the coffee machine in the hallway, pouring little cups of black sludge for the both of them to drink. If he closes his eyes, he thinks he can hear the click-clack of her brown boots on the sparkling floor, can imagine the scent of disinfectant piercing his nose, can see the depressing hospital walls, bathed in the florescent light that always made everything worse.

 

They would usually go out to breakfast in the mornings after those hospital-filled nights, trying to cheer Viserys’ up by scooping ridiculous amounts of Nutella onto his pancakes, a move that worked the first time, and never again after that.

 

Rhaegar thinks about Viserys, on the gap year that’s lasted for more than a year, wandering around Europe. Asia, maybe? He hasn’t spoken to him for two months, not since his brother finally got one of those calling cards to appease their mother that cut their conversation short fifteen minutes in.

 

He hears a cry from downstairs, Rhaenys, and can hear Elia’s soft tones soothing their daughter, and feels guilt pierce him, angry at himself for living in a past ten years gone, instead of helping his wife in the very real, quite messy present.

 

He closes his father’s book, and shoves Lyanna’s photo under the cardboard box, feeling as though he should whisper an apology to her, for keeping her in the dark.

 

Downstairs, Rhaenys is sobbing and sucking her thumb, and Elia is patting ointment onto the long scratch on their daughter’s arm. He sees Balerion’s black tail swish past the kitchen door, and goes to scoop up his daughter, taking the cream from Elia’s hands, ignoring her exasperated look.

 

Red peppers are sizzling in a pan, and Rhaegar looks at them with hate, already imagining the fire that will explode in his mouth if he even tries one, knowing Elia can chew two at a time, even reach for a third while he gulps down half a gallon of water.

 

He gives the peppers a lackluster little nudge with the spatula, and then carries Rhaenys out of the kitchen and tickles her, turning her sobs into laughter.

 

Elia is a good person, sweet and witty, quick to smile and quicker even to help. Rhaegar thinks that she is probably the kindest person he’s ever known, just all around _good_. It makes it worse then, when he thinks about Lyanna from time to time. It makes him feel a little nauseous that on their wedding day, when Elia walked toward him in those measured steps, red cheeked from people looking at her, but smiling, he had wondered how he would feel marrying someone with hair more unkempt, eyes more gray.

 

They had gotten married in a place so huge it felt like a cathedral, even though he thought it was unnecessary and Elia thought it ostentatious, but it was what his family had wanted. He had thought, when he first walked through the doors, how strange it was to be here, had even heard a ghostly frost-tipped voice breath into his ear, saying they _should just go out into the forest by my house, should just say vows there, exchange rings there. Do we need rings? We should just do it there, it’ll be more special, just us._

He had imagined what it would be like to elope with Elia in the same manner, whisper vows for only each other to hear, by her childhood home. Gone from his imaginings was the dark forest Lyanna so loved, gone the ice and snow, the white tree with red leaves that couldn’t possibly be natural. In its place was Elia’s home, her desert plains, trickling fountains, intricate mosaic patterns.  

 

But they had married instead in the cathedral, gold bands on their fingers, with neither a white tree nor a sandy desert in sight.

 

The first time he had seen Lyanna had been in a restaurant. He had been sitting with Viserys, waiting for their parents to show up, trying to think up conversation topics appropriate for an eight year old. It was these times their age difference felt a problem, fourteen years of differences that hadn’t been helped by his parents sending him away to school. But he had finally gotten his brother talking about animals, sharks and lions and bears! Even pretend animals, like dragons! Aren’t dragons the coolest, Rhaegar? Rhaegar had made Viserys happy then, telling his younger brother about how hundreds of years ago, when families had things like mottos and shields, their family’s animal had been a dragon. _Maybe, Viserys, you’re a dragon too!_ He had gotten distracted then by laughter, and looked to the source. A little ways across the restaurant, a woman was laughing, hair obscuring her face. She lightly shoved the teenager next to her, a younger brother, Rhaegar supposed, and he felt an odd sort of jealousy at this woman, that she was able to so easy interact with her family. She had shaken her head then, wiping her hair out of her face, and Rhaegar had never seen anyone more beautiful. Viserys had rattled on about dragons, and Rhaegar chastised himself for not even listening to the brother he wanted to know better, but all he could see was her. She was a study in contrasts, pale skin with hair impossibly dark, and red, red lips.

His parents had swept in then, his father stoic in business suits, his mother regal with her long skirt and long hair. They had all sat down together, Rhaella replacing him as Viserys’ most talked to companion, and Rhaegar and Aeyrs had sat next to each other in familiar silence.

 

“Huh,” his father had breathed, nodding over to the girl’s table. “That’s Rickard Stark, we used to work together. Remind me to say something later.”

 

Rhaegar had nodded.

 

“Raucous family,” Aerys laughed, little strains of disapproval seeping through. Rhaegar watched as a cup of red wine tipped sideways at the Stark table, upending itself into the youngest boy’s lap. The woman had flushed, looked to be apologizing, dabbing at her brother with a napkin, while another man, a brother, Rhaegar assumed, had roared with laughter before he too leaned over to help.

 

Before they had left, his father went over to the Stark table, extending his hand toward Rickard, and the two men and smiled and laughed.

 

“This is my family,” Aerys had waved a hand to them. “My wife, Rhaella. My youngest, Viserys, and Rhaegar, here.”

 

Rickard had done the same with his family, naming the wine-soaked boy as Benjen, the oldest as Brandon, the quiet one as Ned, and the woman as Lyanna.

 

In his memory, Lyanna smiles at him, but her face is replaced by reality, by his daughter’s glossy black strands, the ones he’s trying to scoop up into a braid, and only half succeeding at.

 

“No, Papa,” Rhaenys exclaims, before she turns around on his lap to face him, taking his own long hair in her chubby little hands. “Like this!”

 

Elia walks into the room and laughs, at her determined daughter and her bemused husband, and he resolves to put all thoughts of Lyanna Stark out of his mind.

 

Rhaegar keeps his hair in the braid at dinner to make Rhaenys happy, even tries one of Elia’s peppers, and she says he’s getting better, that he managed to get one whole half down before his eyes began to water.

 

It’s at night that Lyanna washes behind his eyelids once again, she he wonders about as he slips out of Elia, kisses her, says goodnight.

 

The second time he had seen Lyanna Stark had been at a party her family had thrown, some get-together that the Targaryens were surprised they were invited to. But they had gone, and Rhaegar had been wandering around the Stark home when he bumped into _her_ , the beautiful girl from the restaurant. She had looked sheepish, and had two bottles of beer in her hand.

 

“I was trying to sneak out, but I’ll trade you a beer for your silence!” He can still hear her laughter, little ghostly wisps washing over his body. “You can come with, if you want!”

 

They had gone out into the forest by her house, sitting under a huge white tree next to a steaming pool.

 

“It’s interesting--we found out recently that my ancestors used to actually worship these trees. Like, prayed to them, married in front of them, all this stuff. It’s why we think there are faces on them, that people carved them in so the gods could watch over them.”

 

“So, if you had been born a few hundred years ago, you would have been praying to a tree?”

 

“Shut up,” Lyanna laughed, “just let it happen!”

 

Lyanna loved those old trees and they had gone out to the forest, the _godswood_ , as she called it, often throughout the years they knew each other.

 

It was were they first kissed, Rhaegar’s hand brushing over Lyanna’s hair, her hand fisted in his shirt. It was where he had first undressed her, terrified that her father would somehow find out he had had sex with his only daughter on his property. It was in Rhaegar to say _make love_ , but Lyanna laughed the words away, saying they were overly saccharine, cloying like too much candy. Rhaegar didn’t agree, but he went along with it.

 

After Elia and he had gotten married, he had thought he saw Lyanna once, passing by him on the street, and he had run out of the coffee store to chase after her.

 

“Lya!” he had called, but the woman who turned at his voice wasn’t Lyanna after all, just some woman with her coloring.

 

Rhaegar slips out of bed, careful not to wake Elia sleeping beside him, and climbs the stairs to the attic, takes Lyanna’s picture out from under the box.

 

He doesn’t know if he’s forgiven her, doesn’t think he has, and almost hates her for that, for what she’s done to him, how he can’t let her go. He stares at this glossy Lyanna, frozen in time by her white tree, and thinks about that last day.

 

“I’m going out, to get the flowers,” she had said, and he had wanted to argue.

 

She hadn’t come back.

 

After the first two hours, Rhaegar had been nervous, trying to calm himself down. _She probably just went to get coffee_ he told himself as he walked down to the flower shop. _That damned coffee addiction!_

 

But Lyanna hadn’t been at the flower store, and the owner said she had left two hours ago. She hadn’t been at her favorite coffee store either, hadn’t been at the park, and wasn’t at home when he came back.

 

He had called her friends, who hadn’t heard from her, had even considered going to the police, who he knew would only tell him he couldn’t file a missing persons report after only two and a half hours.

 

He was being silly, he had thought. Lyanna wanders. _And really, Rhaegar, when has Lyanna ever been on time. It’s been three hours. No time at all._

 

But Lyanna hadn’t come back by night, and Rhaegar had truly begun to panic. He called her friends again, who were no help, and he wandered around the apartment, thinking about where she could be.

 

 _What if something happened? What if she got hurt?_ All Rhaegar could hear was white noise, this constant buzzing in the back of his brain.

 

 _She’ll be back by morning_ , he had told himself, _it’s just Lyanna. You know her, she runs off sometimes._

 

But it had felt strange, because Lyanna never just left someone without saying anything, didn’t run off by leaving her home and not coming back.

 

 _She’ll be back by morning_ , Rhaegar had told himself, and tried hard to believe it. He didn’t sleep. She didn’t come back.

 

When it was an acceptable time to call—seven am on a Saturday was an acceptable time, right?—he called her brothers. Benjen didn’t answer, so he tried Brandon, because he came next in Rhaegar’s phone. Brandon had groaned into the phone. “What?” he had snapped, but when he found out it was Rhaegar, all the tiredness had been wiped from his voice, and he railed on him, angrily speaking into the phone, but Rhaegar couldn’t figure out what he done, even though Brandon obviously believed he had done _something_. Next, he tried Ned, cool-headed Ned, who answered the phone on the second ring.

 

“I don’t know where Lyanna’s gone, Ned, I don’t know if something happened, I tri—"

 

Ned had sighed, and that cut Rhaegar off, even though Ned remained quiet afterwards.

 

“It’s just… Lya, Rhaegar. Lya could never really stay in one place for too long. I don’t think it’s even you, it’s just her. She leaves. She’s okay, she called me. But…”

 

She had left. She wasn’t in trouble. She wasn’t hurt. She had chosen to leave. Somehow, that was as bad a blow, even knowing she was safe. She had left. It didn’t even completely feel like Lyanna had left him, felt more like she had left their entire _life_.

 

“I think, in a really weird way,” Ned was still saying, “that’s she’s kind of proud of that. Like she can pick stuff up and leave, and start all over. But she does it, and it looks like she can do it without a care. But she does care, and that’s the sad part. Because Lyanna cares a lot, she just has to move. I don’t even think she can help it.”

 

He hadn’t seen her again, had lived ten years without her, and had tried, miserably, unsuccessfully, to forget her. But she made it difficult, because he would see Ned around town every once in a while, and Ned would update him, even if Rhaegar told himself he didn’t want to be updated. _She’s traveling_ , would be the usual update, and Rhaegar wondered why traveling was better than him.

 

Throughout the years, he picked up his ringing phone a few times to be greeted by silence, and he would whisper her name into the phone, wondering.

 

“Lya?” he would ask, and then the line would drop, and he would hear buzzing on the other end.

 

He hasn’t heard from her in ten years, until this letter, shaking in his trembling hands.

 

 _I’m sorry, Rhaegar_. The letter says, and it feels almost like a knife to his heart to see his name scribbled in her rushed handwriting.

 

 _I know those words really aren’t enough, but I’m sorry._ He appreciates the sincerity, the solemnity, knowing it was probably difficult for her to write something serious, without adding a joke to diffuse tension. He’s angry at himself, thinking that he shouldn’t be appreciating her, should be angry at her, but anger is difficult with Lyanna Stark.

 

_If I come back, can we try again?_

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to thank everyone, so so much, for the really nice comments! They definitely make this more enjoyable, especially since a lot of the time I'm just writing really randomly. If anyone ever has any prompt ideas, I'm super happy to hear them! :)


	5. Rhaegar--Modern AU II.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “'I love to smell flowers in the dark,’ she said. ‘You get hold of their soul then.’”  
> \--L.M Montgomery
> 
> "I've loved and lost for more than one lifetime."  
> \--Brideshead Revisited, the 2008 film

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This continues off from the last chapter, and will be followed by another chapter concluding this specific AU.  
> Concerning ages, Lyanna and Rhaegar are both meant to be young when they first meet, but not the ages from canon. Lyanna is 20 and Rhaegar is 21 at the very beginning of their relationship, and she leaves when she is 24 and he is 25. It's been ten years since she's left, so he's now 35.  
> Also,  
> 1\. The piece Lyanna makes Rhaegar listen to is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iw23KM3-Ry8  
> 2\. I know nothing about constellations.

The flowers, which he couldn’t smell when he entered the attic are suffocating now, filling the dark room with a syrupy, deathly sweetness. When he feels lightheaded—from roses or memories, he’ll never really know—he leaves, climbs out onto the roof, to look up at the stars. He leaves the letter behind. 

 

The sky is dark, a beautiful mix of blue and black, but a mass of stars stare down at him. He used to take great solace from the stars, had liked lying on the grass by his family home when he was young to stare up at them. Back then, when he felt sad without a reason (he has a reason now, he thinks, seeing a flash of gray eyes and an upward quirk of red lips) the stars had been a solace, but they seem cold now. The white dots marring the sky seem judgmental, somehow, as though they are chastising him for thinking of a woman ten years gone while his wife sleeps downstairs.

 

One night, when he and Lyanna had still been happy together, they had gone out to the godswood of her family’s home up North, and Rhaegar had tried pointing out the different constellations he knew to her. They had been alone that weekend, as only Lyanna’s father still lived in that old house, and he had been off visiting her youngest brother Benjen. They had driven up from the city, a five-hour drive through winding lanes and red and gold trees, and Rhaegar had marveled at how much he had enjoyed the drive, never growing tired of listening to her talk. They had reached a particularly long road, lined with pines and deserted except for them, and Lyanna had put on the opening music to The Shining for them to listen to, saying it was family tradition to _always_ listen to this song on this road.

 

“I think it started when we were picking Ned up from college one year, and we were all so tired and Ben was whining because he had hurt his hand carrying some of Ned’s shit and Brandon was pissing Dad off and I just put this on.” Lyanna had laughed, and it unnerves him how the sound can pierce through thirteen years, realer to him than even Elia’s laugh. For one blissful moment, he is back with Lyanna, laughing, her hand on his thigh as he steers. “Poor Ned,” she had said, with a wistful little smile, “he has to put up with so much of our crap!”

 

That night they had gone out to the woods, lying under that weird white tree, looking up at the stars through the red leaves.

 

“That’s the Big Dipper, obviously,” Rhaegar had said, pointing, “I mean, the leaves are kind of obscuring it, but you can see the sides.”

 

Lyanna had nodded, head in his lap, and hummed in agreement.

 

Rhaegar had shifted his head so it was at an uncomfortable angle, searching the sky, “I can’t completely tell, but I think that’s Orion,” he had pointed up again.

 

“Is it?” Lyanna had asked, before turning over and grinning at him. _Wolfishly_ , he thought, _grinning wolfishly._

 

“I can see his belt,” Rhaegar had swallowed, as Lyanna had reached up to undo his own.

 

“Why are you stopping?” Lyanna had grinned, enjoying their little game, one hand pushing away his pants while the other tugged at his shirt. “Tell me more.”

 

Rhaegar had tried remembering the other constellations he knew, but couldn’t recall them. Where had all those lessons gone? All those times his father had pointed out the stars in their different configurations to him, naming them. They had been wiped from his memory.

 

“There’s the Pleiades!” Rhaegar had gasped as Lyanna took him into her mouth. The Pleiades were nowhere in sight. All rational thought had dissolved when Lya took her own clothes off, and Rhaegar thought again how perfect she was, and then they were one, and all he was thinking of was her.

 

Lyanna had dragged him into the little pool near the tree afterward, slipping into the steaming water. It was late, and the moon had shone into the little grove, casting Lyanna’s skin in a silver light, making her hair even darker. She slipped into the pool, looking for all the world like an otherworldly goddess, and Rhaegar thought it was the most perfect moment of his life. Rhaegar had followed in after her, and Lyanna had dove under, pulled at his legs, and resurfaced, laughing, and then she had dunked him under.

 

_Perfect, perfect, perfect._

 

Rhaegar isn’t sure what the most perfect moment of his life was now, now that fourteen— _could it really be fourteen?_ —years had gone by. Rhaenys’ birth, he thinks. It had been so…shocking, he supposed, seeing his little girl for the first time, and it was impossible to get through his head that he had helped _make_ her. His _daughter_. And for a while, Lyanna Stark had been gone from his mind. Instead, he had this little perfect unit—beautiful Rhaenys, growing into Elia’s miniature, and Elia herself, with her dry humor that never failed to surprise him. But then he had seen Lyanna’s lookalike through the coffee store window, had run after her, only to find it wasn’t Lya at all. With this discovery had come the horrible realization that Lyanna Stark had never really left him, was just waiting in some darkened crevice of his mind before she blew back in, like a powerful gust of wind, riding back into his consciousness on a wave of blue rose petals.

* * *

 

Lyanna had always wanted to travel, cooped up for too long in that icy childhood home in the middle of nowhere, and so they had, together, their one big trip. They had gone to England, stayed in tiny towns, explored crumbling old churches, walked through misty fields. They had gone horseback riding once, on the moors, and Lyanna had laughed.

 

“It feels like we’re in a made-for-TV movie of _Wuthering Heights_ ,” she had said, hair whipping in the wind.

 

They had ridden right onto the bank of a river, the waves lapping softly against the sand, bathed purple in the dusk. A sign a little ways off marked this spot of the river, the Trident, as historic. Some battles had been fought on the banks centuries ago. Nothing major, but Rhaegar had stopped to read the little plaque while Lyanna waded out into the water. He had finished reading and followed her, keeping an eye on the horses so they didn’t run off. The water had been cold, and he could feel it seeping into his socks, lapping around his ankles.

 

“Lyanna!” he had called after her, and she had turned, the last light of day catching her hair, forming a red halo around her head.

 

* * *

 

The memories are too much, and whenever Rhaegar thinks about Lyanna for too long, it feels like his brain will explode out of his skull. It leaves his hands shaking and his head rattling. He remembers how jittery Lyanna had been towards the end of their time, and wonders if this is how she felt.

 

He goes back downstairs, passing the attic, passing his room, pausing to make sure he hasn’t woken Elia, and goes into the kitchen, to grab a pen and some paper from beside the phone.

 

He writes her name, _Lyanna_ , and it is the first time he has written it in ten years.

 

He wants to write about Elia and Rhaenys, feels he should explain the life he has now, and so he begins to. He doesn’t know how much detail he should give, thinks she doesn’t really deserve detail, but he writes about how unbelievably kind Elia is, how funny she is. He writes about Rhaenys and her kitten, who is currently wrapping himself around Rhaegar’s legs, about how fiery his daughter can be.

 

He looks over the letter, but it is too personal, could almost be a page from a diary, so in the end he crumples it, takes out a new sheet of paper.

 

In the end, without even really thinking, he writes,

 

_You have been the love of my life._

_I hate you for it._

 

He folds the paper, puts it into his pocket, and gets up.

 

He is going to go back to his room, but isn’t tired, just haunted. He goes instead to Rhaenys’ room, leans against the doorway, watching his daughter sleep. Her hair is tangled, a dark mass of shiny curls against her pink pillow, her little lava lamp throwing purple light over her face.

 

He is leaning against the doorframe when a hand slips under his shirt, begins to rub his back.

 

“She’s perfect, isn’t she?” Elia whispers.

 

Rhaegar looks at her, smoothes dark hair back from her temple, smiles. “She’s you.”

 

Elia presses a kiss to his shoulder, before she walks back to their room.

 

Rhaegar closes the door to their daughter’s room, and his hand brushes against the paper in his pocket. He goes to the kitchen, to the sink. He takes out the letter, and lights a match.

 

_You have been the love of my life._

_I hate you for it._

He watches the paper catch alight before he flicks it into the sink.

 

Some letters were never meant to be sent. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, thank you all so much for the comments! They've been SO lovely i can't even


	6. Elia--Modern AU III.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “They tell us the people we love are 72.8% water—there is no such thing as crying, we are only trying to turn ourselves inside out. This is a noble pursuit.” –Lewis Mundt, excerpt from Water
> 
> "I cannot say what loves have come and gone,  
> I only know that summer sang in me  
> A little while, that in me sings no more"  
> \--Edna St. Vincent Millay

 When Rhaegar returns to their room after burning his letter of lost love, Elia is lying in bed, eyes closed, heart beating, a rushed, painful _thump_. She feels the mattress dip as Rhaegar slips in beside her and breathes in short slivers through her mouth, so silent it seems she breathes not at all. She feels Rhaegar turn in the bed, feels the outline of his body press behind hers, feels his hand rest lightly on her stomach. Eventually, Elia hears his breathing slow, steady out, and knows he has fallen asleep. She opens her eyes, staring into the dark of the room, seeing nothing but loss, hearing only the _swish_ of years gone by, feeling the soft fingertips of ghosts pressing heavily on her heart. Does she know her husband at all?

 

Maybe she had once, back in the beginning, back in the past. Rhaegar’s hand on her stomach rises and falls with her breathing, and she traces over it gently with her fingers. The first time she had met Rhaegar she had shaken this hand, smiled up at him, looked up into that impossibly handsome face. Those purplish eyes had been warm, crinkled with his smile, and she had liked that.  But then Oberyn had whisked her away, away from those eyes and that hand, past the people drinking and laughing, and into Mellario’s small kitchen. Mellario had been pouring drinks carelessly, as was her way, alcohol sloshing over the sides of tall martini glasses. Her hands had been waving wildly in the air, and Elia had been forced to duck away from the cigarette burning in Mellario’s hands. Oberyn laughed each time Elia jerked back from Mellario’s swirling cigarette, and had thrown his arm around her shoulder, telling her how good it was to see her. Doran had been rushing in and out of the kitchen, bringing Mellario’s hastily concocted drinks out to their friends, all here to celebrate Doran and Mellario’s engagement. Looking around the messy kitchen from her perch by the window, Elia had smiled at her absurdly wacky family—Oberyn sneaking a drink behind Mellario’s back only to have her swat him when he turned around, Doran looking at his fiancée with such unbridled warmth, kissing her lightly when he thought Elia and Oberyn weren’t looking. Doran had carried more drinks into the living room then, greeted by an appreciative roar—“I’m trying to get _drunk_ , Martell!”—and in had come the blonde man from earlier, Rhaegar was it? offering to take over for Mellario so she could enjoy her own party. She had thanked him profusely, kissed both his cheeks, and left to join Doran with their guests. Rhaegar had pushed up his sleeves and had gone to work, chopping up pieces of lime and dunking them in the glasses. Elia thought him very meticulous.

 

Oberyn had gone after some black-haired girl into the living room, and Elia had wandered over to the cupboard, rummaging around for salt.

 

“You a tequila fan?” Rhaegar had asked her, nodding to his line of neatly chopped limes.

 

“Not really,” Elia had poured the salt into a little dish, placing it next to the cutting board. “I like the limes at the end though.” She had smiled, “I’m an adult!”

 

Rhaegar had laughed, a warm reverberating sound, and she had smiled at the sound of it.

 

They had talked a bit then, the limes waiting patiently on the cutting board, the drinks forgotten. Elia found out he was her age, twenty-seven, and had lived in the city forever. He was learning how to ride a motorcycle. She had responded with a childhood story—the time an eleven year old Oberyn rode a motorcycle into a pool back home and she had helped him drag it out before returning it to its rightful place, dripping and threatening to rust. Rhaegar had shaken his head and laughed, “How were you even able to drag it out?”

 

“Twelve year old brute strength, obviously,” Elia had teased. She and Oberyn had been grounded for so long after that that the first time Elia was allowed to hang out with her friends outside of school she had dragged them to a candy store and had gotten sick off all the chocolate and gummy peaches she had eaten. Elia refrained from telling that to Rhaegar.

 

Oberyn had burst into the kitchen then, interrupting them. “A few of the bigger drinkers have been asking where their shots are and one guy’s so drunk off his ass I think even Mellario is getting fed up.” Oberyn had reached for a drink and swallowed it in one audible gulp, smacking his lips when he was done.

 

“And you’re sure that guy isn’t you?” Elia had asked sweetly.

 

“I am the picture of moderation. Anyway, I think Doran’s going to give a speech, and seeing as this is probably the one time either of us will see him get a little weepy, I wouldn’t miss it.”

 

They had followed him into the living room, where Doran stood with his arm around Mellario, grinning wildly.

 

“We wanted to thank you for coming!” Mellario began, and as Elia listened to her soon to be sister-in-law joke and her brother share some heartfelt stories, she felt hyperaware of Rhaegar standing next to her as she perched on the arm of a plushy chair.

 

“I’m so lucky to have found the most wonderful person,” Doran had been saying, gazing down at his fiancée, and Elia had felt Rhaegar’s eyes on her. 

* * *

 

Their room is hot; Elia’s skin is burning. She wishes she could call Ashara, but three in the morning is too early to call, even if Ashara would say it wasn’t. Besides, if she moves, she’s worried she’ll throw up. She traces Rhaegar’s fingers.

 

Elia had enjoyed their dates, when everything was first starting. Rhaegar was smart, almost intense about it, and she had liked listening to him speak, hearing what he had to say. They had wandered around museums, biked through parks, stumbled a few times out of bars.  Kissing him was absorbing and colorful, like looking into galaxies. Everything was tingling. She was awake.

 

But Rhaegar could get very quiet, solemn, usually when it was cold and snows were swirling, when lopsided snowmen would sprinkle the streets, guarding dark houses and the children that had made them. It was disconcerting, to see him fall into a silence and sadness Elia didn’t understand.

 

“He’s in one of his _moods_ ,” Oberyn would judge, but it felt too uncharitable for Elia to agree, so she would stay quiet, and hope it would end. But mostly, mostly Rhaegar felt like crisp air, ready to clear her lungs.

 

He had proposed in a forest, a sprawling dark web of trees. It had been beautiful, welcome especially after the hours of driving, but for a second—a second Elia felt shamed about later, after all his planning—it felt strange. She had watched Rhaegar drop to one knee, kneeling in a patch of moss, a looming tree casting shadows on his face, and wondered why he chose this place, so dark and damp and far, so unlike the sand she grew up with, the heat she loved. But Rhaegar was kneeling, ring box in hand, and Elia had thought fondly of him putting the box in his pocket before picking her up in the car, him carrying it all this time. She said yes.

 

They had moved in together a few months later, a sweaty day of hauling furniture and unpacking boxes. Looking around the new house, Elia had felt so proud of everything they were building.

 

The house seems less hopeful now.

 

On moving day, Elia had been bringing some of her boxes into the attic, ones containing old photos, winter clothing, and she had shoved some of Rhaegar’s boxes to the side to make room for her own. One had tipped over, and had apparently been open because some of its contents went scattering to the floor. The box was unlabelled, but held photos and books, some crinkled paper at the bottom. The book Elia had picked up was old and leather bound. She flipped through it, saw some drawings of dragons and vanquishing knights, but stopped at the title page, where a spidery hand had written, _To Rhaegar for his adventures, and for Viserys, when he is old enough to join him._ Farther down, the same hand had written, _Love, Father._ Elia had smiled, thinking of a young Rhaegar voraciously reading this same book, opening his arms wide pretending to be a dragon, fashioning butter knives into swords to be a knight. She wondered about his father, who she never met, and who Rhaegar doesn’t talk about often, because the end was so difficult. Viserys she had met when she and Rhaegar had gone to Rhaella’s house, for an engagement dinner. Rhaella had been lovely, kind smiles and striking, speaking with a soft, melodious voice. Viserys had been sweet, funny in a tired teenagerish persona, as if he were behaving the way teenagers were expected to behave. Daenerys, Rhaegar’s much younger sister, had been bubbly and quick to laugh, and Elia was happy to get to know them.

 

When Elia had shut the book, she noticed dried flower petals on the ground, and she scooped them up to press back under the front cover. A picture had fallen out, of a beautiful girl sitting on a tree branch. On the back of the photograph, in Rhaegar’s hand, it said _Lyanna, Winterfell’s godswood_.

 

The last thing that had fallen out of the box was a letter, written on lined paper torn from a notebook.

 

_Hi!_

_I thought I’d send you an_ actual _letter for fun but the Dickensian vibe I’m going for is kind of ruined by the fact that this is paper torn out of my 12 th grade bio notebook…_

_Hope you’re doing well! I feel like Viserys has probably conscripted you into playing dragons with him, so that’s what I’m imagining as I write this. In my imagination though, you’re waving a match around in front of your mouth pretending it’s dragonfire but you would never do that and where is this train of thought going?_

_It’s really hot in my house right now—my brother cranked the temperature up to the sun so I feel like I might as well be in a desert, even though it’s probably going to start snowing. Hmmm. I haven’t been doing so much, but I’m going horseback riding with my friend Domeric later. He thinks he can beat me, but we’ll see. Benejn is also thinking of getting a tattoo so I told him I’d go to a tattoo parlor with him tomorrow to talk to someone who knows what they’re doing. Brandon is obviously all for it, and Ned is quietly judgmental (haha). Anyway. Say hi to your family for me!_

_I love you,_

_Lya_

Elia stared at the letter, feeling a bit bad for reading it. She couldn’t fault him for keeping it, not when she still had stuff from exes (she thought Ashara would tease her if she knew she still had one of Arthur’s shirts tucked away somewhere). She wondered if the box had opened during the move, or whether Rhaegar had been looking through it. But there was nothing for her there, so she closed the box, and left the attic. Rhaegar came inside when she had reached the bottom of the stairs, holding champagne and cheery orange roses, and Elia had thought fleetingly of dried blue rose petals trapped in a book upstairs.

 

Rhaegar had picked her up then and carried her to their bedroom, placed her gently on the bed, and she had laughed a little at his carefulness. He had smiled and then bent down to kiss her, covering her body with his. Rhaegar loved like he lived, attentive, intense, and as Elia looked into his closed eyes, she had thought briefly of Arthur, of them kissing each other, tearing clothes off, but laughing, so joyous in being together.

 

Their wedding was huge, too big for Elia’s liking, but Rhaella seemed so happy planning a big event that the soaring ceilings and extended guest list seemed worth it. Ashara had planned a bachelorette party the weekend before and even though Elia flushed with slight embarrassment over the scavenger hunt tasks her friends made her do (roller-skating through the park with a veil on with Ashara singing behind her seemed tamed compared to the giant Long Island Iced Tea she had downed later that night) it was one of the best days she could remember. After their friends had gone home, Elia stayed at Ashara’s house, and the two had flipped through TV channels aimlessly, eating the dirty shaped pasta Sarah had given her as a joke gift (“It’s _required_ that someone give you this!” Sarah had said while Ashara screeched in amusement and Elia flushed and snorted with laughter). 

 

“I’m nervous,” Elia had said to Ashara, keeping her eyes on the dolphin jumping into waves on the TV screen.

 

“Cold feet?” Ashara had asked, and Elia saw her turn to look at her through the corner of her eye. “I mean, that’s normal.” She had paused, and then began hesitantly. “But, you know you don’t have to actually get married, right? Not if you don’t want to.”

 

“No, it’s not that,” Elia had given her a little smile. “Just a big change.”

 

Ashara had smiled, grabbed Elia’s free hand in hers. “I’m always here, you know that.”

 

“I know,” Elia squeezed Ashara’s hand. “And what a wonderful way to spend one of my last nights as a single woman, eating pasta shaped like penises.” Ashara had snorted. They fell asleep on the couch, the TV humming in the background, Elia’s head on Ashara’s shoulder.

 

 

 

* * *

 Rhaegar had stood at the end of the aisle on their wedding day, staring at her as she took her small steps to meet him. When she had entered the hall, everyone rose, turned to face her, and the attention made her flush. As she walked toward Rhaegar, a beam of light covered him, illuminating his hair so it looked like a halo. She giggled, a soft sound that no one appeared to hear. Rhaegar was smiling, but as she got closer, his eyes got hazy, like he was looking into space, unseeing. For a flash he looked almost pained, but then he was smiling again. The look must have been a trick of the light. She reached him, they clasped hands, and an hour later, when they emerged into the blinding light of day, they were married.

 

Marriage felt _right_ , like she and Rhaegar were carving out a space together, creating routines, jokes, memories that were theirs alone. They wandered around parks at dusk, eating in their backyard when the sky turned that inky blue color Elia loved, lighting candles and letting fireflies buzz around their heads. On weekends they would go out to get breakfast together once they finally rolled out of bed. One weekend morning when fall was settling in, when bursts of autumnal colors danced on trees and the air was crisp, Elia and Rhaegar walked to the coffee store a few blocks outside. As Elia waited in line for her latte, Rhaegar had run outside, saying he just saw an old friend. Elia had watched through the large windows of the store as Rhaegar called after someone, watched a man turn at his voice. She couldn’t hear them, but Rhaegar had smiled at the man. He had a long face and brown hair, and he seemed distantly, achingly familiar, nudging at something very deep in her mind. But she couldn’t remember, and turned away from the window as the barista called her name.

 

That night she had found Rhaegar in the attic, bent over that box with the books and pictures and letters. She saw the picture of the girl in his hand, _Lyanna,_ she remembered, sitting in the tree branches, smiling. She hadn’t known if she should say something, disturb Rhaegar from his reverie, had wondered whether it would be better to quietly climb down the stairs, pretend she hadn’t been there, both to him and herself. But he had looked up.

 

“I was just getting this book for Viserys. He and Dany should have it.” Rhaegar had waved the leather bound book in the air, but even as he said the words, Elia knew they weren’t true.

 

“Okay,” she had said, because what else was there to say?

* * *

 

Rhaenys had been born two years after they got married, a bloody and painful birth that left Elia tired, weak and elated. Her daughter was a joy, a beautiful girl.

 

“She looks just like you!” Rhaegar had said when he first held her, and Elia, lying in her hospital bed, sweaty hair clinging to her damp forehead, gazed up at her daughter and her husband, and saw tears in Rhaegar’s eyes.

 

Oberyn had pushed his way inside soon after, promising to spoil his new niece, and Doran and Mellario had come in afterward, their little daughter Arianne looking awestruck at her tiny cousin.

 

And for a moment, one sparkling sliver of time, the world was perfect.

* * *

 

The months after Rhaenys’ birth were some of the happiest, exhausting but joyful months, where Elia’s fears about not being good enough were pushed aside, replaced with watching her daughter grow. Rhaegar said Rhaenys was Elia’s replica, and the thought made her swell with pride. Rhaegar was so loving, amorous, and she spent hazy hours drowning in his kisses, letting him draw her to his body.

 

But then winter had come, and with it the shadows and the silence, and the ghost of the girl in the photograph. Rhaegar withdrew again, hidden ventures into the attic, and when he was out Elia would climb the stairs, hoping to figure out why her solemn husband needed to spend so much time in a cold lonely room. But he wasn’t alone she found, not really, because the box was always opened, and her photograph would be lying on top, pristine when so much of the attic was covered with dust.

 

 _You can’t take someone’s memories from them, Elia. It means nothing._ But it pained her, no matter what comforting words she lulled herself to sleep with, pained her that Rhaegar could be more absorbed in old words and old photographs than he could be with his wife.

  

She could have forgotten the photographs, Elia thinks now, lying in bed with Rhaegar asleep next to her, but she could not forget the silence, the sadness that would cover him like a shroud. She wanted to help, but he would never say anything was wrong, would only say he was tired and would kiss her. He would say he was going to lie down, just for a minute, but she could hear him climb the attic stairs, even though she knew he walked as quietly as he could.

 

The solemnity came in spasms, little moments throughout months, and would come usually when she thought everything was winding its way back to normal.

 

“I just need to get something upstairs, my love,” he would say, and when he came down he would be quiet, giving her only soft smiles that no longer warmed her heart.

* * *

 

 But the worry is deeper now, suffocating, and she feels like she is submerged in an ocean, not able to see to the top. Liquid darkness shooting through her veins, roiling her stomach.

 

That night, after she had woken up and seen Rhaegar outside of Rhaenys’ room, she had been meaning to go back to her room, but she could see the stairs to the attic still let down from their holding place in the ceiling, and she went up them, to make sure all the lights were off.

 

The letter had been on top of the box, and for an instant she wanted to laugh, because it was so stupid for Rhaegar to leave the letter out in the open, in the middle of an attic that was as much hers as it was his. She picked up the letter, read it, put it away.

* * *

Miles away, Lyanna stood outside her P.O box, hands shaking as she opened the little door, heart pounding, wondering if he had gotten the letter yet, if he had replied. The box was empty, and she felt a gush of disappointment. Lyanna had thought about Rhaegar again, wondered if he had a family now, people looking after him, people to look after. She wondered if this was another selfish act, asking him to start over.

 

Lyanna knew what it was to love someone, to be caught in the blistering spaces between hearts. She had loved him so much it trapped her. She had loved him so much it destroyed her freedom.

* * *

 In the letter, Lyanna had asked to start again. Elia had wanted to throw up. She knew they hadn’t been writing each other, from Lyanna’s words, but the thought was overwhelming. She had walked downstairs and gotten in bed, had pretended to be asleep until Rhaegar had come in.

 

His hands wrapping so naturally around her were a comfort—he wouldn’t stay so close if he meant to leave, surely? But the thoughts are buzzing in her head, thousands of bees poisoning her happiness. She gets up and goes to the kitchen, wanting water.

 

Her answer to her concerns lies in the sink, a soggy, burned paper. The ink is running a bit, but the words are legible, and the cut they saw into her heart is very real.

 

_Lyanna,_

_You have been the love of my life._

_I hate you for it._

 Elia stares into the darkness. She has never heard silence so loud.

* * *

 

After she finishes her plans, Elia sits in the living room, in the most comfortable chair they own. She is alone, except for the dull weight on her heart--the pain of being married to a man who loves another. How long had he? From the very beginning? Elia's eyes slowly grow accustomed to the darkness, and for a second she sees the girl from the photograph sitting on her couch, staring at her. But then she blinks, and it is just her, just Elia, just the one Rhaegar never loved quite enough. 

 

She hopes she made a decision that will set them free. She has bought two plane tickets to Oberyn’s house, for her and Rhaenys. She’ll talk to Rhaegar tomorrow, because even through the confusion and the loss, she knows he hadn’t wanted to feel everything he felt. Maybe they’ll stay together, or maybe they won’t, but for now she is taking action, and even she can feel some pride in that. Elia Martell will never be someone’s second choice.

 

She goes to Rhaenys’ room, looks at her wonder of a daughter, and wonders if she can restart. 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This concludes this specific AU. I love Elia but I found her very difficult to write here. Hopefully it wasn't too off.  
> I'm very jam packed for the next few months, so updates may be coming more slowly, but I will keep this going!


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